SideWiki: A game changer from Google?

Google’s SideWiki is a great new tool which allows you (yes, you) to add your thoughts to somebody else’s website. Your comments can then be viewed by anybody who has the Google toolbar, ie tens of millions of people, and rising fast. We’ve tested it by adding comments to Wal-Mart, Wikipedia and BBC news pages. There’s also one on this page; you’ll see a little tab symbol top left of the screen if you have the toolbar installed. Although there were a few delays before some of our comments appeared, they all got there in the end. One can just imagine some of the uses this technology will have, particularly where people’s patience has been eroded by spin doctors hiding the truth regarding abuses of corporate social responsibility. In effect, we suddenly have the ability to slip a leaflet into the company’s annual report.

 

Call-centre labour in a global economy

Network member Richy Leitch reviews the latest publication in the excellent ‘Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation‘ series, edited by Ursula Huws. The book can be bought here, and chapter abstracts are available here.

“Call-centre labour in a global economy” takes up a theme broached in earlier volumes: the emergence of the call centre as a new form of work organisation. In her introductory essay, editor Ursula Huws points out the complex and multifaceted nature of call centre employment. As a form of work, it has many features of Taylorism:  routine, highly monitored and scripted procedures undertaken to tight deadlines. However call centre work now covers a wide variety of situations – from routine selling and information provision, to specialised medical and IT expertise, and skilled public sector services (undergoing the process of ‘callcenterisation’). This breadth is creating some significant theoretical and political problems for the left, according to Huws. Where are we to place call-centre workers in technical and social hierarchies? How do occupational identities coalesce in such transient forms of employment? How can we build collective organisation?

This book (Merlin Press, 2009) addresses a number of issues confronting those who labour within the “post-industrial sweatshop” – from the particular dynamics of its labour processes to larger issues regarding the process of globalisation and wider social divisions, especially those of gender – in an effort to comprehend the specificities of the call centre phenomenon.

 

Meltdown: the end of the age of greed

For many trade unionists the financial events of the last year have been troublesome, to say the least. What has been going on to create such economic turmoil: massive job loss, bankruptcies, credit freezes and incredible amounts of debt and bailout funds? Moral condemnation is easy – and certainly justifiable. But what lies beyond this – in the realms of analysis and political response? Paul Mason’s Meltdown: the end of the age of greed (2009) provides one answer, in its attempt to relate the spectacular economic events of autumn 2008 to long–term economic and political trends within contemporary capitalism.

 

One big union in Denmark?

“The best strategy for the trade union movement would be to concentrate our energies into one single union.” With these words Poul Erik Skov Christensen, general secretary of Denmark’s largest union*, has launched a radical proposal for union reform. “Let us start a debate on the development of the trade union movement. It is my vision that we, in the coming years, should work towards amalgamating the Danish LO-affiliated unions into one large single union…” Below is a translation from Christensen’s article in the Danish newspaper “Politiken”. 

 

Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice

Richard Leitch reviews “Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice“  by Bill Fletcher Jr. and Fernando Gapasin  (University of California Press, 2008).

There are a number of books examining the crisis of trade unionism in USA. Fletcher and Gapasin’s account takes the recent 2005 split within the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) as its starting point, then works back to expose the split’s fundamental structural and ideological roots, before charting an alternative, “ a different theory and practice of trade unionism” which they call ‘social justice unionism’ (SJU).

Their core argument is that the ‘New Voice’ – ‘Change to Win’ dispute has achieved very little, failing to address the challenges confronting US labour and the long-standing limitations of ‘business unionism’. To do so requires a radical break with existing approaches, tackling the issues of globalisation, the constituency for modern trade unionism, and of the union role in processes of social change.

 

No regulation without representation

To what extent does the struggle for workplace democracy overlap with the struggle for human rights? In this interview we speak with Roy Adams*, one of the world’s leading figures in the field of labour rights, former professor of industrial relations, founding member and chair of the Society for the Promotion of Human Rights in Employment, and member of the International Labour Rights Commission.

1] How do you see the outlook for workers and their unions today? Do you think the current crisis will have a major impact?

My concern has always been with the broad phenomenon of labour rights as human rights. It’s a concern that was relevant prior to the current crisis, and will be relevant long after the crisis is no more than a memory. In short,

*  Labour rights are human rights
* Human rights are universal and indivisible
* Human rights are non-hierarchical – each is equally sacred and deserves to be treated with equal reverence
* Collective bargaining is a human right
* The right to refrain from bargaining is as bogus as the right to enslave oneself, or the right of minorities to freely choose a racist society
* We need to be concerned about the rights not only of workers in countries with poorly developed democratic political systems but also about the rights of workers in countries that are widely acclaimed to be advanced political democracies such as Canada, the US and Britain where labour rights violations are all too common.

 

Multinationals and the commodification of public sector work

Combining national case studies and comparative work, “The New Gold Rush: the new multinationals and the commodification of public sector work” examines the transformations involved for capital, labour, trade unions and service delivery in the drive towards public sector privatisation.

Editor Ursula Huws, in her introduction to the book, points out that the new public services industry comprises: “the very operations of our own government – the inner workings of the democratic machine and the services that citizens expect to receive” (p2);  ie health care, education, social security, and environmental protection, as well as all the associated information, communication and facilities support. This has all become a gold mine for capital, open to penetration by multinationals and powerful new corporations. Central to the shift is the transformation of public services into standard replicable commodities, with their labour power effectively ‘recommodified’.

Analysts on the left typically consider privatisation in all its various forms – commercialisation of public organisations, joint ventures, full private ownership – as capital’s gain and labour’s loss. This collection provides plenty of evidence to support that understanding.

 

The struggle for new unionism in Mexico

Richard Leitch updates his story on the exemplary solidarity work of two unions – the United Electrical Workers of America (UE) and Mexico’s Authentic Labor Front (FAT). Their relationship is an inspiring one for unionists, particularly as it draws heavily on rank and file involvement. The struggle for a new and independent unionism in Mexico involves ghost unions, corrupt bureaucrats, legitimised thuggery and battling drug cartels.

Last century a deeply restrictive ‘corporatist’ political machinery developed in Mexico during the 70-year dominance of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). This effectively constrained the development of the labour movement, imposing a network of official union bodies and labour laws which fiercely protect the status quo, and are backed by repression. Tying together state, official union and employer interests, this conservative ‘triple alliance’ has dominated Mexico’s social order for decades, posing real problems for any independent force.

 

From ideology to democracy in economics

The recent crop of stimulus packages presents us with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to compare economic strategies. The sums involved are staggering. How will we feel when we look back on this period in 10 years? Will we wish we had all adopted Thailand’s “trickle up” model, giving money straight to those who need it most? Or will we wish we had followed the US example, covering as many bases as possible? The European Union is turning the crisis into an opportunity, and taking significant steps towards a greener world. And then there’s the option of the big spend-up on infrastructure, as exemplified by countries like Norway. 

One thing is certain: unions must help bring economics under democratic control. The Age of Ideology is over.

 

The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movements

This book by Dan Clawson (Cornell 2003) is the most thorough overview of innovative campaigning in the US labour movement seen so far, reports our intrepid reviewer Richard Leitch. 

Clawson is not content to simply record developments in union organising strategies — he claims they point towards something much bigger: a genuine revival of the labour movement, ‘the next upsurge’. He reminds us that historically US labour has never developed in a regular incremental fashion but through discontinuities, including periods of upsurge where membership soars and the existing forms and expectations of trade unionism are radically redrawn. The 1930s was one such period, witnessing a dramatic shift in organising focus from craft to industry-wide basis, that transformed labour relations and impacted upon wider economic and political environments. That upheaval led to the foundation of the ‘New Deal’ labour relations system that dominated the second half of the twentieth century. Now however this framework is unable to meet the realities of a changed social and economic environment, putting the issue of labour renewal firmly on the agenda.